A few weeks ago, we asked what it is about Africa that never leaves you. One of the things we’re really enjoying about these Shamwari conversations is seeing where your replies take us next.
Richard Hiles from the UK got us thinking about something we’ve often noticed but never actually stopped to consider: why is it that we tend to sleep so incredibly well on safari, when we’ve usually done remarkably little to tire ourselves out?
Here’s how Richard describes it…
I have no idea why I sleep so well on safari; I don’t deserve to. I did nothing physical or stressful. I wasn’t working, and I didn’t even have to do the driving. Plus, I had a siesta after lunch. By only ten o’clock I’m ready to turn in and, rather than read a book, I think I will listen to the soporific chirping and chiming noises of reed frogs at the lagoon. I never manage more than a minute or two and I’m gone. I’m roused briefly by the distant roaring of a lion, or memorably on a couple of occasions the sawing of a leopard right out outside my tent. It’s no hardship and I savour the moment until I drift off again.
I awaken when the first light of dawn is gradually silhouetting the trees that I see through the mosquito gauze of my tent front. The growing definition of the trunks and branches as the sky lightens seems to mirror my own emergence back to consciousness. I am vaguely aware of someone shuffling the wood in the donkey boiler behind my tent and catch the faint aroma of wood smoke reminding me of the unseen person who is already up and working so that I can have a warm shower. While I wait for the water to heat, I lie listening to the hippos who have returned to the water and are now offering grumpy snorts as they jostle for their day’s position.
Eventually I hear the crunch of footsteps on the dirt path to my tent and a gently spoken ‘knock knock’ – the African solution for how to knock on a tent flap! This is followed by the gentle clinking of a coffee tray being set down on the table outside, signalling the moment I really do have to get up if I want to join the morning game drive. The time is still only ridiculous-o’clock but I have slept so well I am refreshed and ready for whatever the early morning bushveld may bring.
I make my way to the resurrected remains of last night’s campfire where muted conversation marks the arrival of my travelling companions as we gather to set off. Bliss!
Richard Hiles has been a subscriber for many years, and takes every chance he can get to travel around Africa.
Around the campfire
Do you sleep better in the bush? And what are the sounds that send you to sleep, or wake you up?
Editor’s comment: We stayed at Flatdogs Camp, in Zambia’s South Luangwa National Park, a couple of years ago, and were awakened late one night by the almost thief-like deftness with which an elephant stripped the seed pods from a winterthorn tree outside our tent – we watched it through our gauze window, mesmerised, and couldn’t believe it when we woke to the dawn light and realised that sleep had robbed us of an extended viewing of that magnificent creature that had been so close to us.
Tell us your late-night stories, we love listening to them.
(Here’s a quick video of that elephant near our tent during the following day, apparently a regular visitor!)
